"John Barbour opens a small but intriguing historical window"

A group of 13 paintings unseen in 40 years by the late, little-known Pasadena artist John Barbour opens a small but intriguing historical window.

Hard-edge painting -- a term coined in 1959 by the influential Los Angeles critic Jules Langsner to describe geometric abstractions by John McLaughlin, Karl Benjamin and others -- was the first indigenous Modernist art exported from Southern California in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Still far from fully examined, the period style was widely practiced.